This section provides background information related to the present disclosure which is not necessarily prior art.
Computer assisted image guided medical and surgical navigation systems are known and used to generate images in order to assist a doctor during a surgical procedure. In general, these image guided systems use images of a body part, such as CT scans, taken before surgery to generate images on a display, such as a monitor screen. These images are used during surgery for illustrating the position of a surgical instrument with respect to the body part. The systems typically include tracking devices such as, for example, a light emitting diode array mounted on a surgical instrument as well as a body part, a digitizer to track in real time the position of the body part and the instrument used during surgery, and a monitor screen to display images representing the body and the position of the instrument relative to the body part as the surgical procedure is performed.
While such known surgical instruments have worked for their intended purpose, there remains a need in the art for a surgically navigable instrument for use with these image guided systems that is simple to use and manipulate.